In the most recent "Star Trek" (2009), Admiral Christopher Pike is shown wearing gray-green shoulderboards with four gold devices, along with thin sleeve lace of three thin rings and one larger ring. Does anyone have any information on these new designs? Also, Captain James T. Kirk is awarded a medal of commendation. Does anyone have any information on this medal and its design? I bet the collectors market will offer a copy at some point!

According to the Art book and some sites, which I still have to buy, I think there ranks up to the captains or so more or less known/make sense. Ensign does not have anything (confirm), Lt. Jr. grade -- one thin gold/silver ring (speculation), Lt. Sr. -- one thick gold/silver ring (confirm), Lt.-Cmdr. -- one thick and one thin gold/silver rings (speculation), Cmdr. -- two thick gold/silver ring (confirm), Capt. -- one thick, one thin, and one thick gold/silver rings (confirm). Admiral's are even murkier, I do not know, maybe 3 solid rings are Commodore, 3 thick and one thin gold rings Admiral, and 4 thick rings is a Fleet Admiral(?).

Here is a website with the original series rank insignias, I strongly believe that the new 2009 following sort of similar similar structure. Instead of puncture line is a thin line and I think, the Admirals are different +shoulder bars!: http://dave158.tripod.com/Insignia.htm

The costume designer for this movie was, apparently, intentionally someone with NO prior experience of the Star Trek universe.

The coloured operational Starfleet uniforms are clearly based on those of the original 1960's TV show and the cuff rank insignia broadly follow this, as noted above.

All the other Starfleet uniforms, however, were new creations for this movie. The "in-universe" explanation is that the events during the movie led to a disrupted timeline so things were not exactly the same as they would have been during the '60s TV show.

The gold cuff-rings on Admiral Pike's uniform at the end of the movie are similar in configuration to some of the speculated designs for Admirals' insignia from the TV era. It is worth bearing in mind, however, that Admiral's insignia were never actually seen on-screen in any of the three seasons of the original Star Trek (those flag officers above the rank of Commodore who did appear were invariably only head shots seen on viewscreens) although at least one set was created and can be seen in an outtake from the episode "The Trouble with Tribbles." there is no evidence that firmly links the insignia used to any particular grade of flag officer although several different attempts have been made to extrapolate from this and the insignia seen in the later Star Trek: The Motion Picture. A number of such speculative designs for insignia schemes can be found on the Internet.

Equally, it's also worth pointing out that a good number of other Starfleet admirals appear in the movie (eg the Academy Commandant and other members of the Tribunal board) but most wear a form of gray service dress (?) that is different to both Adm. Pike's uniform (he's the only character seen in that costume) and the dark charcoal gray uniforms worn by the instructors at Starfleet Academy - although there are simlarities to the design and construction of all three variants. Adm. Pike is the only character seen to wear shoulder insignia so the significance of these is uncertain although intuitively it would seem to be implied that they relate to his grade. The exact form of the four gold marks on each shoulder cannot be easily discerned just from the shots seen on-screen.

The decoration awarded to Kirk appeared to be in the form of a larger version of the Starfleet command division "star" emblem but it too was new for this movie and only seen fleetingly on-screen.

I'll post some pictures later when I'm at home - both screen caps and drawings.

I've included a number of Michael Kaplan's original costume designs and some pretty hi-res screen caps from the movie that show a range of uniform details, including Pike's insignia and Kirk's medal.

I've also included some simplified sketches of the uniforms and a rank scheme that includes conjectural insignia for those ranks not seen and a version of the TOS ranks (also with some conjecture) that the movie versions seem to have been based upon.

Quite why Pike's uniform is different from other admirals or why those for the Academy for instructors and cadets (along with the weird gray uniforms for other Starfleet officers) had to be SO different to the operational uniforms seen on the Enterprise is beyond me.

Oh well. Here are the pics:

Pike

Kirk's medal:

Other uniforms

That's a lot of images - hope they go some way to answering your questions!

The content of "Memory Alpha," like many Wikis, is not always entirely accurate so take what you read there with a pinch of salt. The designations given to some of the new movie uniform variants in that article the don't seem to be entirely correct.

Forgot to add these into my last post above:

Rank insignia from Star Trek the original series and from the 2009 movie.

Bear in mind that BOTH of these show extrapolated insignia for grades not conclusively seen on-screen. The original series insignia is only one version that has been floating around for some time and although many other rank schemes have also been proposed to "fill in the blanks" it would appear that this may have been the one used by the designers of the new movie as a basis for the insignia on the updated costumes.

The admirals' cuff rings do seem to be remarkably thin, even compared to the slimmed-down silver cuff stripes of the new operational Starfleet uniforms - but then I guess that the combination of an entirely different uniform and the epaulette insignia makes the boldness of the cuff stripes somewhat less important.

Overall, I'm afraid to say that I felt that the broad range of uniforms used for various Starfleet roles in the new movie just didn't work for me. I can see design similarities in the construction all the "new" costume designs (ie those never seen before this movie) but they still seem to have little to connect them with each other and even less that connects them with the gold / blue / red operational uniforms that were based on the original series costumes. There's no clear consistency or continuity of rank and other insignia or symbols apart from the use of the various versions of the Starfleet "arrowhead" emblem - and even that is a little dubious. I would have liked to have seen a much better thought out scheme of uniforms and insignia where each individual version was readily identifiable as part of a cohesive whole.

Using the basic designs from the movie but trying to rationalise everything into one simple scheme with consistent versions of operational and formal uniforms that include both flag officers and cadets and also have consistent rank insignia, I propose the following: